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About Me

is an unapologetic, bleeding-heart liberal who writes about everything from politics to private parts. A TV-writer in a former life, her credits include "Big Spender" for Animal Planet,and "A Child Too Many," "Cradle of Conspiracy" & "Deceived By Trust," for Lifetime

Sunday, May 30, 2010

On Friday, BP's top official upgraded the impact of the Gulf oil spill from "very modest" to "environmental catastrophe." Really? It took you geniuses over a month to come up with that one?

Then on Saturday, BP announced that "top kill", their mud-for-oil effort, failed to stop the flow of oil from the well and it is "time to move on" to another approach. What? Wishing upon a star? Shouldn’t a plan for such a possible disaster have been in place before this well was dug?

Another shining example of “free market” thinking run amok because God forbid we should stifle multi-national corporate profits with government regulation. And once again, thank you Dick Cheney.

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Happy Anniversary to the bra…

This week we celebrate the 100th anniversary of the tittie tote. Once considered to be an underwear-only garment, it has today taken the main stage.

One of the funnest TV moments ever is this quickie from “Will & Grace” when boob-challenged Grace wears a water bra. You just know that's not going to end well.

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What’s more unbelievable than Octomom as the spokesperson for PETA’s Spay & Neuter program?

How about Bristol Palin as the spokesperson for teen abstinence while netting herself a cool $30,000 per speaking engagement and posing for a strangely Stepford fashion layout in Bizaare Magazine.

Because what tells kids to “just say no” to sex like a teen mother with a book deal.

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Rush Limbaugh finds a fourth woman to marry him…

Twenty-six years his junior, Kathryn Rogers, 33, is described in the new Limbaugh biography as “a soft-spoken listener who, on the radio, shouts rude, sometimes vulgar personal insults at Limbaugh’s ideological enemies.” Sounds like a match made in heaven.

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Mediocrity won out for the third year in a row on this week’s season finale of "American Idol" when the uniquely gifted Crystal Bowersox got beaten out by Lee DeWyze, a sweet kid and so-so singer with all the star power of a prune Danish.

Much like last year, when the flamboyant Adam Lambert scared the crap out of the viewing audience, clearly folks just weren’t ready for a single mother with corn rolls, piercings, and a tattoo no matter how gifted she was.

And they wonder why their ratings have tanked…

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This week, right-wing comic Dennis Miller surprised the hell out of me by expressing support for the repeal of the military’s draconian “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, aptly named by President Clinton who “did not have sex with that woman.”

Miller said (and I’m paraphrasing here), “If a gay or lesbian wants to serve in the military and put their lives on the line to protect my freedom, I’m grateful.”

So on this Memorial Day, as we finally take the first steps toward repealing DADT, let’s also remember and honor those gay men and women who serve courageously, and then let’s finally extend to them all the same freedoms that the rest of enjoy.

Marriage equality now!

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And finally…

Because there isn’t a steaming pile of shit big enough or bad enough to describe how we feel about BP, a vocal group dubbing themselves the ‘Raging Grannies” gives it their all. Hit it, Granny!

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Every morning, right around six he lets it be known that the world has blessed us all with a new day and it’s time we dragged our butts out of bed and enjoyed it.

After nearly a lifetime as a city dweller, I left the traffic, smog, and crowds of Los Angeles for the beauty and serenity of a small rural community in central California and quickly realized that I had a lot to learn.

The people here are warm and friendly, never too hurried to stop for a chat. To avoid a neighbor’s eye or mutter a brisk hello while moving on will not endear you. True, I’ve had to avoid grocery shopping during peak hours or risk my ice cream becoming a puddled mess in my cart, but when you’re sick or have lost a loved one, you can count on this whole community to wrap you in its arms.

There’s not much nightlife, so people entertain mostly at home. For my very first dinner invitation the host carefully instructed me to avoid driving over the wet cow paddies as they would splash up on my car and create quite a mess. I agreed to be mindful of that and thanked him for his advice. However, not in all my years had I ever received such an instruction and I couldn’t help thinking it odd. Not so much that he would caution me to avoid driving over wet cow paddies, but that he would just take it for granted that I’d be able to tell the wet ones from the dry ones. As I drove to their home that night, it seemed a good idea to simply avoid all of them, which I did. I’m just grateful the sheriff wasn’t around to watch my car zigzagging down the road as I’m certain I would have been arrested on the spot.

As a newcomer, I was eager to plant my first vegetable garden. It can only be learned by experience that two zucchini plants are more than enough, and if you don’t lock your car here in the summer other newcomers will fill it with the green stuff, but there is nothing quite like eating food that you’ve grown yourself.

As for our dress code, you don’t want to be strolling around town looking too clean. If you don’t smell like a horse or a cow and have at least one trace of some kind of manure somewhere on your person, people will think you work for the government and regard you with suspicion. Other than that, we’re a trusting bunch and seldom even lock our doors.

When I broke my neck and was hospitalized for several weeks, friends would stop by the post office to pick up my mail. They didn’t need my box key. The postmaster knew them, knew me, handed it over and sent her best wishes. I’m sure this broke all sorts of federal laws, but we don’t worry much about stuff like that. Whenever someone in town dies, we lower the flag in the town square to half-mast for an entire week which, apparently, is also illegal, but that’s how we honor our own.

Soon after I first moved here, I came out of the post office one day to find a mule-drawn cart carrying a coffin moving down the street on its way from the church to the cemetery. Cars respectfully pulled over to let it pass, while people on the sidewalk bowed their heads and took off their hats. Then everyone went on their way like it was the most common sight in the world. That took a little getting used to.

Like any community, we have our problems with traffic. Only here it might mean being stuck behind your neighbor’s tractor for half a block or so. We don’t mind. None of us is ever in much of a rush anyway. When out-of-town guests come to visit them, I caution them to slow down and under no circumstances touch their horn. Honking is reserved for only the most dire of emergencies and is otherwise considered the height of rudeness. It’s not unusual for townsfolk who have been honked at to stop, get out of their vehicle, approach the offending honker and deliver a polite but firm WTF.

Some of my friends in L.A. wondered how long I’d last up here “in the boonies.” It’s been 15 years now and I can honestly say I wouldn’t live anywhere else.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

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For $5,000 and a month’s supply of veggie burgers, Octomom Nadya Suleman has signed on as PETA’s newest spokesperson for their “Spay & Neuter Campaign.”

Every year seven million dogs and cats enter shelters where more than half are put to death, so if this unlikely example of planned parenthood can get people thinking about nipping those nuts and tying those tubes, good choice PETA!

Along these lines, other interesting pairings might include:

Jeffrey Dahmer for “Vegetarian Times.”

Jesse James for the “Boy Scouts of America.”

Sarah Palin for the “American Library Association.”

Feel free to toss in your own.

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Arizona’s New Immigration Law…

… where anyone of a color lacking the pink hue and not carrying papers to prove their legal status can be subject to arbitrary detainment has claimed another victim.

Yes, Dora the Explorer’s little brown ass has been busted for illegal border crossing and resisting arrest. As police cuffed and dragged her away, Dora was heard to cry out, “But I’m a celebrity. Get me out of here.”

Meanwhile, prices of produce are expected to skyrocket as fruits and vegetables rot in fields where white hands fear to tread.

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Barcelona launches bikini wars while Britain lets it all hang out…

Posters like this will soon be popping up all over Barcelona:

In an attempt to convince tourists to confine their bikini-wearing to the beach, authorities in the seaside town said to be fed up with visitors roaming the streets in their swim wear have launched a campaign to discourage the practice. “We just don’t think it’s civil.”

We have to wonder what they’d think of “The Naked Office,” a new British reality series which attempts to prove the premise that workplace nudity decreases stress and improves productivity. According to the host, “For most people, going to work in the nude is a very daunting prospect, and I believe this extreme process will help them push their boundaries and become a close team that trusts each other enough to get naked together.”

Not advised for Sushi chefs.

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Kentucky Tea Party candidate for Senate Rand Paul seemed anxious to tout his conservative credentials when he hit the talk show circuit this week, but may only have succeeded in shining a spotlight on his more contentious views:

Presidents Obama’s “anti-business” handling of the BP oil spill is un-American.
- Because what is “American” is letting the taxpayers get stuck with the bill.

And as for the mining accident in Kentucky last month which killed two people and came right on the heels of the Virginia mining disaster, Paul had this to say, “Accidents happen…”
- Hey, there are more miners where they came from. Get over it.

Behind the scenes, some of his GOP colleagues are said to be longing for the good ol’ days when their candidates just claimed to see Russia from their house.

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Happy Birthday Cher!

Still one of the most original rock divas of all time, Cher turned 64 this week.

Where were you when Cher was singing this song?

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Finally…

Cost of cleaning up BP’s mess in the Gulf: $542 million and counting. BP makes over $3.9 million every hour. In the weeks since the rig exploded, they've earned over $2.8 billion. Yes, that’s billion – with “B”.

So why do a group of Republicans led by Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski want the company to pay for only the first five days of the cleanup and put taxpayers on the hook for everything else?

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Despite God’s best effort to design all forms of life to live in balance with each other and the planet, we have a population problem. Basically, we’re over capacity with no end in sight. That’s why God created religion. So we’d have something to start wars over. That and oil. But as violent and blood thirsty as we are as a species, and given the fact that as long as man has walked upon the earth there have been wars in which hundreds of millions of us have been massacred, we still haven’t been able to balance out the “arrivals” with the “departures.”

So God created plagues, droughts, famine, and no end of natural disasters – yet still we managed to out breed His every effort. As a last ditch attempt to rein in the ever expanding human footprint, God had one more trick up His sleeve. Within every human being He cleverly planted the “stupid gene” designed to activate in a certain number of individuals any time the population in an area reached critical mass. The “stupid gene,” would incite such behavior as to cause said individual to simply self-destruct.

Voila! Problem solved.

So imagine God’s angst when He looked down to see meddlesome humans passing laws to save stupid people from their God-given mission. Smart people don’t need a law to make them wear their seat belts when they ride in a car. Therefore, if you ride in a car and don’t wear your seat belt, you are stupid and should you die as a result that’s the plan.

Ride a motorcycle in my state and the law says you’d better be wearing a helmet. I think most reasonable people will agree that in a match between a human skull and a patch of asphalt the skull is going to lose. However, if you believe that your skull is the exception, then you should be able to exercise your right to go without and may I just say… buh-bye!

It intrigues me that we have a plethora of laws to protect stupid people from themselves and so few laws to protect the rest of us from the truly malevolent – those corporate criminals who, in pursuit of profit, would destroy the very planet we all depend on for life.

BP Oil was allowed to go ahead with that high risk drilling operation in the Gulf without any regulation whatsoever requiring them to have a plan in place to clean up a spill. Such drilling safety regulations were gutted by the Bush administration.

Even this week when an attempt was made to raise the liability amount from the paltry $75 million per spill figure to $10 billion per spill, still a fraction of what we now know it will take to clean this mess up – if we even can – Republicans defeated the attempt, siding instead with the oil companies. Well, I supposed you have to give BP something for the $15.9 million they spent on lobbying.

Meanwhile today, U.S. fisherman lost their livelihoods and more wildlife lost their lives.

Personally, I’d rather see laws enacted to rein in the powerful and greedy corporate forces that are a real threat, and let the stupid people self-destruct as God intended.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

An Australian documentary maker has convinced several young people to appear in a reality television program in which they auction their virginity to the highest bidder with each participant guaranteed $20,000

I don’t know about you, but all I got for my first time was a hickey and a bad reputation.

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News to make you smile…

Give a big round of applause to Hazel Soares who, at 94 years young, picked up her college diploma on Saturday earning a degree in art history. She now hopes to find work as a docent at a San Francisco Bay Area museum.

Next time I’m tempted to whine about something that’s “too hard” I’m going to think of Hazel and bitch-slap myself.

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Breaking story! Carrie Underwood and Holly Madison are gay!

And here’s the proof. They’re playing softball! Apparently, that’s the new litmus test for lesbians. Who knew?

Female athletes have always had to fight attacks on their sexuality, but it reached a whole new level of absurdity this week when the Wall Street Journal published this photo of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan, taken in 1993.

Predictably the pundits promptly went bat-shit crazy:

You know the world has gone spinning irretrievably off its axis when Bill O’Reilly is the voice of reason.

A week ago President Obama gave the commencement speech at HamptonCollege in Virginia. As befitting such a proud occasion, the president ended his speech with a sense of hope and promise in the future:

"A dream of brighter days ahead, a faith in things not seen, a belief that here, in this country, we are the authors of our own destiny. That is what Hampton is all about. And it now falls to you, the Class of 2010, to write the next great chapter in America's story; to meet the tests of your own time; to take up the ongoing work of fulfilling our founding promise. I'm looking forward to watching."

Meanwhile, Glenn Beck had a commencement speech of his own to make this week at Jerry Falwell’s LibertyUniversity. Here are just a few excerpts of what those lucky kids got to hear:

“Life is hard. And then it gets harder. And then you die.” (Thank you, little Miss Sunshine.)

Thursday, May 13, 2010

This is my all-time favorite highway road sign. I smile every time I see it. If only everything in life was this simple. But instead we get useless drivel like “hindsight is 20/20.” Yeah, but you see, if I’ve already driven my life off the freakin’ cliff that’s not really very helpful now, is it. How about a little foresight once in a while, huh?

Why do we always have to crash and burn to learn our lessons in life? Human beings have notoriously bad judgment. We do really stupid things. All the time. We’re like those little wind-up toys that walk into walls. So why would a God who is supposed to be all-knowing ever consider giving us free will? Is God the ultimate punkster? I sometimes have a vision of Him sucking back on a bong and laughing His ass off, but only when I’m really pissed off about something that, in hindsight, I realize was a colossal clusterfuck which, with a little foresight, I could have avoided completely.

What about a simple handbook that grows with you in the womb and pops out with the placenta? Would that really be so much to ask? A personal guide to life which, if followed, would at least give you a fighting chance with warnings like:

“No man ever pulled out in time.”

“Your trailer park, like all others, will be in the path of a tornado.”

“Women with fat thighs should not wear mini-skirts. This goes for women over 50, too, unless you’re Tina Turner. Failure to heed will result in painful ridicule.”

Had I been able to read in my own personal handbook that on April 4th, 2006, a combination of new high-heels, too little food and copious amounts of tequila would result in a fall where I would break my neck, I might have modified my behavior that night. Maybe at least had some chips with all that tequila. Something. To those who would say, “Why sure, common sense would tell you that,” I repeat, because this cannot be stressed strongly enough, “Human beings have notoriously bad judgment.”

Friday, May 7, 2010

My mother was 32 when I was born, so when I was around the age of ten, these were all the rage among moms desirous of clones. This was in the late 50’s, an era of “Peter Pan” collars and starched petticoats that will not go down in history as our finest fashion hour. Easter seemed to be the time this urge would hit all the moms in the neighborhood the hardest. They really took that whole “Easter Parade” stuff to heart. To this day I break out in hives when I hear that song. The attempt to find a style, color and pattern that would flatter the body types of both a fleshy 40-year-old woman and the stick figure of a 10-year-old child inevitably produced only a truly terrible hybrid that I wanted no part of.

Unless, like my friend, Ellen, your mom had you when she was 16 and now, at 26, she still looked cool. But then you had to explain to everyone that your mom was a ho in high school, which kind of ruined the whole “like-mother-like-daughter” effect you were going for. Coming from a family with a penchant for the juice, I was certainly not one to judge anyone else’s relations. Besides, I liked her mom. When we hit puberty, she let us smoke. This was way before the Surgeon General put a damper on it, when the worst you could expect to be told was that you looked cheap.

At that time I wore black, skin-tight skirts, ratted my hair up into a bleached-out silver beehive and had lined my eyes with black Magic Marker when my mom told me I couldn’t wear eye makeup to school. So telling me I looked cheap because I had a Marlboro hanging out of my mouth was like, “Yeah? What’s your point?”

Needless to say, by then my mother had no interest in dressing like me anymore and the mother-daughter outfits were sent off to Goodwill where I’m sure they continued to emotionally scar other little 10-year-old girls for years to come.

Oddly, as I look back at some of those photos of my mom and me now in our matching pill box hats and crisp white gloves, I’m stirred not by embarrassment at all, but rather by a certain nostalgia for that time and I find myself wishing I’d had more patience with her and her desire for what she must have thought of as a bonding experience. Had I known then that I would lose her only 12 short years later, I’d like to think I might not have been such a pain-in-the-ass about the whole thing.

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

My early childhood years were spent during the Cold War period of the ‘50s when we were taught to duck under our desks and cover our heads for safety should an atomic bomb be dropped on us. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

These days “duck and cover” has a lot of appeal to me only the covers are on my bed and I’d like to duck under them and do a “Rip Van Winkle.” Lately, it seems like every day brings a new catastrophe in the world and I honestly don’t know how many more I can wrap my brain around. The circuits are sizzling and I can smell smoke. It’s not good.

Between the incomprehensible damage from the oil spill, the New York car bomb attempt, and now the horrendous flooding in Tennessee, I’m about to enter the numb zone. I find myself self-medicating with copious amounts of cheap wine and endless episodes of “House Hunters,” but nothing helps.

Bad things have always happened, but they weren’t so immediately and unrelentingly in our faces 24/7 and we can’t seem to catch up. The situation in Haiti is still devastating and I haven’t yet recovered from the West Virginia mine explosion.

I don’t know about you, but if I don’t take a break to raise my spirits soon I may go postal. I’m thinking about hanging out with these guys for awhile.

Sunday, May 2, 2010

The idea is to make the baby cry as loud as they can and to this end sumo wrestlers hold the babies high in the air and do whatever they can to scare the crap out of them. The toddler who cries longest and loudest is considered the winner. Good times.

The baby crying festival is a 400-year-old tradition and Japanese parents who bring their babies to the contest truly believe the sumo-induced crying wards off evil spirits and keeps their tots in good health.

Yeah… I guess if you don’t count the years of psycho therapy the kid will be requiring as an adult.

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For all those ladies who lament, “Why can’t a man be more like a woman?”

Big in the news this week has been a new hormone-laced potion nicknamed “cuddle spray” which, when shot into men’s noses can make males more sensitive, empathetic and even snuggly.

The active ingredient is oxytocin, not to be confused with OxyCotin, Rush Limbaugh’s drug of choice, and men whose noses had been sprayed with the hormone expressed levels of empathy typically associated with that of women.

The spray can be found online under the brand name “Liquid Trust,” and the only downside so far is that the effects last only a couple of hours before a repeat squirt is required.

So, ladies, a surreptitious morning squirt in his nose while he still sleeps and then secretly replacing his regular nose spray could just do the trick.

Personally, I’d like to see this stuff in the water supply.

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And speaking of La Loon Limbaugh…

The defacto leader of the Republican party put forth his theory that “environmental wackos” opposed to off-shore drilling were responsible for blowing up the British Petroleum oil rig in the Gulf this week with this gem: "What better way to head off more oil drilling than by blowing up a rig?" Yep. I see Greenpeace written all over this.

Never one to let facts darken his doorstep, Limbaugh neglected to mention that a failsafe switch that shuts the flow of oil off at the source would have prevented this catastrophe and that such switches are required in off-shore drilling platforms in most of the world -- except for the United States. Why not the U.S.? This was one of the new deregulation gifts to the oil industry devised by Dick Cheney at the beginning of Bush's first term.

Or this pesky little fact: Halliburton, the same company from which Cheney has made a fortune and the same company that, not coincidentally, received all those no-bid contracts in Iraq from, you guessed it, Bush/Cheney – was in charge of running this particular rig.

So it had nothing to do with cutting costs to maximize profits. Of course not. Update: Halliburton was in charge of capping the well. Transocean owned the actual rig. BP is in partnership with both Halliburton and Transocean under the company name "Deepwater Horizon."

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Rumors abound that Sandra Bullock is being considered by the Pope for sainthood…

Yes, while the rest of us were furiously advocating severing the testicles of her Nazi, porn-star screwing, cheat of a husband, America’s Sweetheart was taking a road so high as to give the rest of us mere mortals nosebleeds. Not even an irate “asshole” managed to escaped her pure lips. Now we’ve learned that she’s adopted a beautiful little black baby because she’s just that wonderful.

Crap, girlfriend. Can you give the rest of us a break here?

How the hell are we supposed to compete with that? I don’t have a little black baby. I don’t have a baby of any color. I have a Chihuahua. And I didn’t adopt her from a shelter either. She’s a purebred. I bought her – from a breeder – for a lot of money – because that’s just the kind of shallow, selfish, insensitive bitch I am.

Bullock’s charm has always been that she was infinitely relatable. We could look at her and think, “I could be that girl.” Now when I look at her, all I’ll think , “Man… I suck.”

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The other big media story of the week, of course, was the appearance of John Edwards’ baby mama, Rielle Hunter, on “Oprah” who emphatically declared that she was not a home wrecker.

In the coming weeks, guests on “Oprah” will include Elton John who will declare that he is not gay, Jack Kervorkian who will proclaim that he is not now nor has he ever been a proponent of euthanasia, porn star Jenna James who will reveal that she’s a virgin, and Joan Rivers who will deny all rumors of plastic surgery.

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Finally, tonight on “60 Minutes,” Conan O’Brian will speak out for the first time on the debacle surrounding his leaving “The Tonight Show” and his true feelings about Jay Leno. Here’s a quick peek for the Team Coco fans: